So there I was, chilling in some random-number system in Querious. It was a pipe system, two stargates and no redeeming virtues. But I’d seen some poor shmoe get pwned in an interceptor at one of the gates, and there were several other wrecks there as well. So I waited until I was alone in the system (which took awhile) and drifted in on the wrecks, uncloaking at the last minute for a spot of loot-and-salvage.

I’d done fairly well, picked up some Tech II rig parts and some basic fittings, when local jumped by one, then two. I was enduring a little bit of client-side lag due to a poor internet connection, so the gatefire was delayed by a few heartbeats. I tried to warp as soon as I heard the gatefire, but somehow, I was too slow:

(notify) Warping to MKD-O8 IX
(notify) You are within a warp disruption zone. Get 20000.0 meters from Warp Disrupt Probe to warp.

Crap! What’s a Heretic? It must be an interdictor, to launch a bubble that fast, yes?

Panic time. Time, in fact, to signal the engine room for full military power, to turn on the shield booster, and, most importantly, to find something more-or-less in front of me to get aligned to.

(notify) Warping to MKD-O8 IX – Asteroid Belt 1
(notify) You are within a warp disruption zone. Get 20000.0 meters from Warp Disrupt Probe to warp.

Crap! More rockets, but they aren’t really my worry. Was that more gatefire? I’m not sure, but there’s another ship on my overview now. Warp, dammit!

Rumble rumble rumble whooooooshh! The sweetest sound I ever did hear.

I’m cloaked, I’m warping, I’m safe…

Er, did I say “safe”?

I’m in warp to an asteroid belt, the only thing in that direction. In a Prowler transport. Cloaked. Warping to … uh … uhm … am I warping to zero?

I’m about to die a miserable wretched asteroid-humping death, I can feel it.

Come out of warp, bounce right off some fat golden omber roids. Decloaked, of course. And, yup, there’s Barry Cuda in the Heretic. I’m trying to warp to a random planet, this time at a random distance. He’s RIGHT THERE, but when I mash my cloak button, I start to cloak. And then I’m in warp, and this time, I am safe, he’ll never find me now.

After my heart stopped pounding, I commented in local:

Marlenus > Well, that got my blood moving
BlackHelmetMan > Mine too
BlackHelmetMan > Are you filled with candy? :p
Marlenus > Sadly, no
Marlenus > Empty and looking for a score
BlackHelmetMan > oh :( We thought “yay faction loot”
Marlenus > LOL iwish
Marlenus > Have a look at my blog — ironfleet.com — for a view of the humble life of a salvager. ;-)
BlackHelmetMan > will do, its the least I can do after trying to kill you
Marlenus > I’m just glad you didn’t quite pull it off
Marlenus > Slippery, that’s my motto
BlackHelmetMan > if I didn’t get put outside 30km from you I would’ve had you :p
Marlenus > I cannot argue with your assessment
BlackHelmetMan > oh well, win some you lose som, GL

I’m assuming BlackHelmetMan was in the other ship that I never saw, presumably with the DPS for killing what his friend Barry catches.

Remember how dear sweet Chebri used to complain about Ironfleet “lies” at the drop of the hat, whenever she disagreed with the Ironfleet version of events? ( exampleexampleexampleexample )

Given the close association between Duckeye and Chebri, I was therefore amused by the following exchange. I wrote awhile back:

A long time ago, in the time of The Great INDY War, I had a random war dec from a guy named Duckeye who never showed up. It was right after the INDY alliance called off AC-ME’s dog Chebri, and there were anonymous commenters in this post who suggested a Duckeye / Chebri connection, but it was never confirmed.

I did later confirm that Duckeye is a shared account, because I station camped him for awhile during factional warfare (he was flying for the Gallente scum) and we had a cordial chat during which he utterly failed to remember ever having declared war on Ironfleet, blaming his “little brother” who “played the account for a couple of weeks”. Yeah, that’s pretty obvious nonsense, but it’s the sort of nonsense you’ll get from account sharers who don’t want to be too open about it.

I got three things wrong in that; it was actually Jim Bridger who had the conversation with Duckeye, Duckeye did remember making the war declaration, and it turns out to have been “a friend” who was sharing Duckeye’s account. So, my account wasn’t perfect. But, in a comment, Duckeye showed up and called the story “bull”, on other grounds that make no sense at all:

I like the bull he talks about near the beginning though, because the only time I ever played with faction warfare was when the devs were testing it on singularity half a year ago, thats when I shot CCP Greyscale when he was in his ragnarok… hell my gallente standing is under -2.00, and thats all crap from a year and a half ago when I did missions for Caldari Navy as a mainstay like your everyday Joe, couldn’t participate in Gallente FW even if I wanted to.

I don’t even have a little brother, and I definately don’t talk in local when I decide not to undock because I just minimize eve and boot up another game, it’s fun to waste the campers time instead because they sit outside like retards.

But like I said, nothin but love. He sure tries hard, I’ll give him that.

I guess Duckeye knows something about bull all right, because Jim Bridger still has the chat log:

Session started: 2008.06.25 07:07:39
…
[ 2008.06.25 07:17:02 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Nourvukaiken Local Channel
[ 2008.06.25 07:37:37 ] scout505 > caution, gate campers in tama
[ 2008.06.25 07:37:51 ] scout505 > lots of em
[ 2008.06.25 07:44:23 ] Duckeye > YAY CALDARI, GO CALDARI!!
[ 2008.06.25 07:46:02 ] Jim Bridger > Duckeye! Finally a war you show up for!
[ 2008.06.25 07:46:10 ] Duckeye > do I know you
[ 2008.06.25 07:46:20 ] Jim Bridger > LOL, you declared war on my corp once, but never showed up
[ 2008.06.25 07:46:36 ] Jim Bridger > For your friend Chebri I believe, but that was never clear
[ 2008.06.25 07:47:22 ] Duckeye > ah, yeah, I was going to help but my computer broke basically the same friggen and was out for a couple of weeks, I let a friend play on my account for awhile
[ 2008.06.25 07:47:32 ] Jim Bridger > Ah, happens
[ 2008.06.25 07:48:00 ] Duckeye > seems like it happens too often
[ 2008.06.25 07:51:12 ] Duckeye > I’ve found that the caldarians are pretty damn bored, was taking a complex by myself and was responded with 14 ships
[ 2008.06.25 07:51:35 ] Jim Bridger > LOL, we like to travel in groups. ;-)
[ 2008.06.25 07:51:52 ] Duckeye > noticed, you guys are built pretty much to be in gangs
[ 2008.06.25 07:51:53 ] Jim Bridger > I swear some of the boys outside in Tama can’t even beat off unless they are in a circle
[ 2008.06.25 07:52:48 ] Jim Bridger > I was running around in Gallente high sec in a rocket kestrel, but I did not find any unescorted pods. :(
[ 2008.06.25 07:53:02 ] Duckeye > you guys should probably head down to minmatar-land, they seem to be stomping on the amarr
[ 2008.06.25 07:53:35 ] Jim Bridger > Let ’em stop, I say! I went on a fleet expedition to help our Amarrian “brothers”, they were rude and condescending and got us all killed
[ 2008.06.25 07:53:44 ] Jim Bridger > Er, make that “let ’em stomp”
[ 2008.06.25 07:54:05 ] Duckeye > wouldn’t doubt it, they lost a paladin on the first day
[ 2008.06.25 07:54:25 ] Jim Bridger > They can’t decide what coms to use, so they never have an entire fleet on the same voice coms
[ 2008.06.25 07:56:45 ] Duckeye > you’d be surprised how off guard a lot of people are, all you need to do is hop into a stealth bomber and cruise around enemy safesec and catch ships autopiloting around
[ 2008.06.25 07:57:31 ] Jim Bridger > I am not an SB pilot yet, but I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of that
[ 2008.06.25 07:59:42 ] Duckeye > granted, sitting in a system with 50 war targets is interesting
[ 2008.06.25 07:59:55 ] Jim Bridger > We make it as interesting as we can! ;-)

PWNED by the logs!

Admittedly I’ve made my own mistakes of memory on this blog, but how do you forget participating in faction warfare?

I saw that FTACI Retriever pilot, Kreatus Lucina (the one who was in on the drubbing FTACI gave Marlenus the other day). I thought, hey, an aggressive Retriever is just the sort of thing the Bantam of Doom was built for.

He wasn’t mining into a can, though, so I figured I’d have to be a little bit creative. So I started cleaning up his numerous belt rat wrecks, while ignoring two convo requests from him and also his complaints in local:

Sadly, this did not inspire Kreatus to start shooting at me. Instead, Lach Danan, the bait Osprey pilot who got Marlenus, showed up in a Merlin. By reflex, I warped away; these are not the combats I was looking for.

In warp, however, I questioned the reflex. Bantam versus well-fitted Merlin is an instant face-melt for the Bantam, true. But, like, dude, it’s just a Bantam, who cares? And the other guy could always screw up, let’s give him the opportunity.

So I warped back.

Merlin already gone.

So I looted another FTACI can.

Merlin returns.

Predictable and very rapid face melt ensued, no FTACI screwups on display:

He took me out with four or five very fast volleys with blasters and rockets, during which I had time for just two arty volleys of my own. They were solid barrages, but the Merlin is a much tougher little nut to crack than the Bantam.

Of course there was the usual post-combat game of rock-scissors-paper. I came back in a Thrasher destroyer, he came back in a Manticore stealth bomber. That’s an interesting game of pass-the-grenade when the bomber is in range of the Thrasher’s guns, but he wasn’t. I couldn’t lock him, so I was gone before the second volley of cruise missiles arrived. His repping buddy in the Scorpion was on scene anyway, so it was clear there wasn’t point in coming back. Match to FTACI.

As mentioned in the last post, I’m increasingly learning — painfully, the way all good lessons are learned — that the changes to blockade runners have changed my ore salvage game in a fundamental way that requires new tactics and fittings on my part.

There’s no way to sugar-coat this, last night I lost a Crane to a bait-fit Osprey “mining” cruiser:

All due props to pilot Lach Danan of Firestorm Tactical Industries [FTACI]. I’m even more impressed by the FTACI Retriever pilot, Kreatus Lucina, who engaged with his three Tech 1 drones and stuck in there until he was deep in armor. His contribution, though slight in DPS, made the difference in the end.

It happened like this. I’d cleaned up some drifting ore belonging to another pilot, and while that was going down, Lach Danan made a plaintive request for someone to kill a belt rat, alleging that he’d forgotten his drones. Shall we just say that I found the claim suspicious; in my mind, it marked him as a pilot looking for a fight.

Some twenty minutes later, I returned to the belt with Lach Danan’s jet can on my mind.

Crucial mistake #1: I neglected to count how many mining lasers he was running. EVE Lesson: Overconfidence kills. I still don’t know if he was running one (for show) or a full set; but given how events transpired, I’m guessing he fit two at most.

Crucial mistake #2: I didn’t pay any mind to his corpmate Kreatus in the Retriever, who had been hauling home when full, making him irrelevant to my predatory-salvage calculations. EVE Lesson: Every hull in the game is dangerous.

After grabbing Lach Danan’s ore contribution, which was suspiciously modest…

Crucial mistake #3: I took bait. EVE Lesson (again): Overconfidence kills. A mining cruiser who’s been there for half an hour with no observed hauler (even if I didn’t have continuous eyes all that time) should have more than 1500 cubic meters of ore in his jetcan. I knew that, didn’t care. Should have.

… he was quick to lock me, warp scramble me, and web me. It’s kill or be killed, now.

And then he launched Tech 2 combat drones, which commenced to gnaw at my liver.

By the time I had started a lock on Lach Danan’s cruiser, it was already obvious he had more DPS than I could permanently tank, so I loaded the precision missiles and started locking one of his drones. Killing Tech II combat drones with heavy missiles is kinda like hunting rabbits with bottle rockets — you can get it done, but it’s not fast and it’s not efficient and it’s not pretty.

And I’m not going to have the time, especially because that Retriever pilot has joined the fight with his three drones. I can drive him away with just a few missiles, but do I have the time, or do I have to kill at least one of the deadly drones first?

I chose — and I’m still not clear on whether this was right, though I think it was after looking at the damage logs — to kill the drone I was shooting at first. That took a long time, and I was having to cycle my shield booster by then due to limited cap; the armor was dented.

Crucial Mistake #4: Failure to adapt. If you look at that killmail, you’ll see that my four mids were fitted with shield booster, shield boost amplifier, shield extender, and a warp disruptor. I’ve never fitted a cap boosting solution, as most combat hauler pilots do. If I got in trouble, I always just warped away, and I didn’t get into trouble often, so I preferred to save the cargo space for ore. However, now that the blockade runners don’t get two points of innate warp stabilization, the world has changed. Even a small cap injector would have let me win this fight.

So, after killing the first drone, I drove the Retriever pilot away with just a few shots that took him into deep armor. Retrievers are tissue paper.

That took away a bit of damage, and I went back to shooting at the next drone. By this point my armor has gaping holes in it, and I made my last mistake of the fight: I fat-fingered the missile reloading process, which ended up costing me almost twenty seconds, during which I got into structure.

Finally I killed drone #2. Now, at last, the damage is close to sustainable; if I’d still been in armor, I’d have had time to lock and kill one more drone, and I could have won (maybe; I never tested the Osprey’s tank, and he was certainly fitted with combat in mind.) But the twenty seconds I lost was the nail in my coffin, and I went pop.

Interestingly, the Retriever pilot had time to come back during this process, but I’m uncertain whether he had time to dock and repair and restock drones. However, he came back some 40-50 klicks away and never launched any more drones, so he was out of the fight.

But he was there. And I was in my pod, feeling chagrined.

A nice warm cup of REVENGE would sure taste nice about now. Let’s go see what’s in the hangar.

That Retriever on my mind, I jumped in one of my trusty Manticore stealth bombers. I haven’t really flown these since the missile balancing — some say nerf — but the word is, they aren’t so much fun anymore. Let’s test that theory; if I can’t one-volley a wounded Retriever, I’m going to send this thing back to the factory with a stiff note. But, I’ll bet I can.

How about friend Lach Danan in the crunchy bait Osprey, would he like a taste of my Caldari Navy Wrath Cruise Missiles?

He would! He’s targeting and trying to close to drone range. Cruise missiles away!

I believe it was the second volley that took him into armor, possibly the third; in any case, he changed his mind and left.

At this point, I still had a Tech II wreck on the field requiring salvage, an Ironfleet jet can containing some ore, and a Retriever wreck that needed looting and salvaging. So I went home for the ship I like to call the Iron Crowbar, a Ferox battlecruiser fitted for cleanup work on a hot battlefield.

By the time I salvaged my Crane wreck and emptied my own jet can, Lach was back, in a Manticore of his own. But, he was inside my heavy missile range, and as we traded volleys, he was getting by far the worst of the exchange. So, he left again.

I looted the pair of Cargo Expander IIs from the Retriever wreck, and was starting to salvage it, when Kreatus Lucina returned in his own Ferox, at range. We began trading heavy missiles, but I had superior missile range, and it took him awhile (not long, was he using an MWD on that beast?) to close into his shorter missile range.

Accordingly, I was through his shields and well into his armor when his first, fairly puny, volley of missiles hit my shields. If he had kept that up, he was going to die; but he was still closing and I assume he also had some guns on there. Still, in a one-on-one fight — or even if Lach came back in the Manticore again — it would have been fun to find out.

And THAT’s when a neutral friend of theirs showed up in a Scorpion battleship and went flashy red to me, presumably because he was repping the enemy Ferox. I decided I’d had enough revenge, and docked up.

All in all, a fun run through the asteroid belts, though I’d like it better if I hadn’t lost my beloved Quantum Quagmirer. The boys from FTACI (and their alt or friend in the FTRAD Scorpion) fought well, eschewed all smacktalk, and clearly carried the day, even if I did get my licks in.

Today I thought I’d lost another one of my beloved Cranes. Instead, the enemy fled.

I was out in the belts, when I found a Retriever barge pilot (Bibiss, [L-D-S] ) who had carelessly abandoned some ore. So, I took it.

He immediately warped away.

I went on about my business.

About four minutes later, in a different belt, the guy landed on my head. In a Wolf assault frigate.

It’s taken me some time to appreciate just how painful has been the loss of the innate warp stabilization that used to be built into the blockade runner hulls. Today the lesson was driven home. The Wolf locked me before I could warp out, and he (obviously) has the speed to keep me in lock range.

He began to shoot at me.

It’s possible his weapons skills suck, because it didn’t hurt very bad.

I began to shoot at him, with some precision heavy missiles. I was hitting him, but not very hard.

My shields went down a lot faster than his.

When my shields got down to about half, I turned on my shield booster. They crawled back to full before (just before) I ran out of cap. And then began to drop again as soon as I turned off the booster.

By this time, he’s down to about half shields, but to all appearances, holding. Of course, I don’t know whether he has cap issues, or what they might be; but I haven’t seen any sign of active shield tanking. The Wolf is Minmatar issue, so I’ve never flown it and have no idea how or whether it tanks, or what its fitting issues are. But isn’t it supposed to have plenty of DPS to kill a hauler?

He’s in a corporation, I can’t get away and I’m not killing him, he’s obviously having trouble killing me. But surely he has friends incoming?

This time, by the time my shields get below half, my cap isn’t fully regenerated; so I can tell that he can eventually break my tank if I don’t do something. It will take him a long long time, though. How much ammo is he carrying?

He’s not orbiting me at any great speed, just chasing; so after I shoot my launcher dry of precision missiles, I decide to load some regular ones to see how they hit him. He’s still just below half shields, and looking awfully stable there.

Just as my launcher finishes reloading, he … warps away?

Well, all righty then. I guess it’s time to go home.

I’ve studied the logs. In four minutes of combat, I hit him with 23 missiles, that mostly hit for 15-20 points of damage each, call it 375 points max.

In that same time, he hit me with 165 rounds of ammo, damage ranging from a low of 14 to a high of close to 40, with a strong cluster in the high 20s. At a guess, let’s say 4500 points. If he could have carried on for another four minutes, he’d have been close to having me.

Maybe he lost his nerve, maybe he ran out of ammo, maybe he despaired of breaking my tank. I guess I’ll never know. But I’m happy to have “driven him off”.

There was a guy in local yesterday who was pretty aggressive to Jim Bridger, but never quite got up his courage to engage Jim’s rifter. I spotted him in local again today, and decided to see if he’d go for the “helpless hauler” routine.

He did, and all it took was to relieve him of the two units of ore he was using to keep his jet cans open:

Sorry I haven’t had a lot of updates recently; it’s been busy in real life and in-game, I’ve been flying a covert ops ship, scouting for the TEARS alliance in their recent war. That started off as a big deal, against a fairly large industrial alliance called the Coalition of The Extraordinary:

They brought some fight, Suddenly Ninjas was having a lot of fun and (with some other TEARS people) even killed an unescorted Orca (!). I spent a lot of time looking for more targets like that one, but I never really had much success, and thus, didn’t have anything to report here.

Then a couple more corps saw how much fun we were having, so they declared against COE also; COE, sensibly enough, hired mercenaries. That didn’t have the desired effect (the new TEARS allies had fun shooting at REPO, but TEARS kept hunting CEO) and now CEO appears to be in a failure cascade, with most of its members leaving in the last 24 hours. I suppose they may plan to re-marry after the war, but for now, CEO seems to be an empty shell of its former self:

All of which sounds exciting enough, but for me, it was a war that consisted of flying endless jumps, finding a system with war targets, confirming that they are all solidly docked up, waiting around for awhile to see if that changed (it never did, for me) and moving on.